FEND Off Fentanyl Act and FinCEN Section 9714 measures (2024)

The FEND Off Fentanyl Act is the United States statute, enacted on 24 April 2024 within the national security supplemental (Public Law 118-50), that gave the Treasury a fast, order-based version of Section 311 special measures against money laundering connected to illicit opioid trafficking; Section 9714 of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act is the parallel authority for Russian illicit finance. Together they mark the generalisation of the Section 311 model: primary money laundering concern findings that once required notice-and-comment rulemaking can now issue as orders, at campaign tempo.

Provisions

The FEND Off Fentanyl Act (Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence Off Fentanyl) requires the president to sanction transnational criminal organisations engaged in fentanyl trafficking, declares the flow a national emergency matter, and, at 21 USC 2313a, authorises the Treasury to find a foreign financial institution, jurisdiction, class of transactions, or type of account to be of primary money laundering concern in connection with illicit opioid trafficking and to impose any of the Section 311 special measures, or conditions and prohibitions on transmittals of funds, by order or regulation. Section 9714 of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, as amended, confers the same order-based power where the concern is Russian illicit finance. The order mechanism is the innovation: it strips out the rulemaking delay that made classic 311 actions slow-moving, at the cost, critics argue, of the procedural protections that rulemaking supplied.

Employment history

Section 9714 fired first. FinCEN's January 2023 order against the virtual currency exchange Bitzlato, tied by FinCEN to Russian darknet-market flows including Hydra, was the authority's first use, prohibiting transmittals of funds involving the exchange; a September 2024 order against the exchanger PM2BTC followed. The fentanyl authority's first use came on 25 June 2025, when FinCEN issued separate orders against CIBanco, Intercam Banco and Vector Casa de Bolsa. FinCEN found each institution to be of primary money laundering concern in connection with illicit opioid trafficking and prohibited covered US financial institutions from specified transmittals involving it. The three orders took effect on 20 October 2025 after two extensions. FinCEN later amended only the CIBanco order, effective 16 April 2026, to permit defined transfers necessary to liquidate that institution while leaving the order's other provisions in place.

Effects

The Mexican orders demonstrate the speed of order-based exclusion, but the procedural steps must remain separate. FinCEN issued findings concerning CIBanco, Intercam and Vector under 21 USC 2313a; those findings are agency determinations, not judgments proving every alleged transaction. Section 9714 remains a distinct Russia-focused authority, and neither authority is the same as section 311. FinCEN's 15 April 2026 CIBanco amendment permitted specified wind-down transfers and changed that order's operative scope without withdrawing the underlying finding.

The operative order and effective date must therefore be stated for each named institution rather than inferred from the statutory finding alone.

See also

USA PATRIOT Act Section 311 (2001) · Banco Delta Asia Section 311 action (2005-2007) · Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) · Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (1999) · Correspondent-account closure · Compliance cascade · Financial warfare · Economic statecraft

Sources

• 21 USC 2313a, accessed 30 July 2026.
• FinCEN's 2025 section 2313a orders, accessed 30 July 2026.
• FinCEN extension of all three orders to 20 October 2025, accessed 30 July 2026.
• FinCEN CIBanco amendment, 15 April 2026, accessed 30 July 2026.
• FinCEN Year in Review, accessed 30 July 2026.